Tight finances didn’t bench Riane Roldan’s college dream. In fact, the economics of higher education propelled her to enroll in the Honors College at MDC and created a world of opportunity she never thought possible staying close to home and on a limited budget.
“The school has allowed me to travel to Washington D.C. and New York. I lived in a castle in Salzburg, Austria for two weeks while attending a global citizenship seminar,” said Roldan, 20. “My perceptions of MDC were flipped. There’s a lot happening and lot of opportunities to be had. You just have to be the type of person who is hungry for those types of experiences. It’s the best decision I could have ever made.”
Like all Honors College students, Roldan’s tuition, books, and fees were covered – 100 percent. Roldan was able to focus on academics and rose to become an editor at the award-winning MDC student paper, The Reporter. This past semester, Roldan was selected by the National Association of Hispanic Journalists to cover the Hispanicize Conference, the largest gathering of U.S. Latino newsmakers. This summer, she’s working as a reporter for the Medill Justice Project, an award-winning investigative journalism center at Northwestern University. Roldan and a student from the University of Miami are the Miami Bureau, assigned to cover a high-profile murder trial.
Now as an MDC graduate who holds an associate degree, Roldan is ready to take that leap out of state. Her experiences at MDC, a great GPA and her work as a newspaper editor have all paved the way for the pursuit of a bachelor’s degree and career in journalism. She’s weighing her options, including a full scholarship to Emerson College in Boston.
“MDC put a lot of opportunities in my path. The challenge was having the courage to make the most of them,” she said. “Now I take every opportunity that comes my way. I’m more confident in myself and in my dream of becoming a journalist. I know that is what I want to do.”